Equality between men and woman is among of those (together with a bunch of freedoms and respects, for example on sexuality, and this is still evolving). We believe that the burka isn’t an instrument that helps with this evolution in our culture, at all.

Equality doesn’t mean ‘equal beings’. Woman and men aren’t ‘equal beings’ (neither psychologically nor biologically). Nobody is claiming they are. Just like Islamic culture and Western European culture aren’t ‘equal cultures’ either. When we discuss equality it means that Western Europeans need to respect Islamic culture (up to a certain point), and Islamic culture needs to respect Western European culture (up to a certain point).

That’s how people live together on the same small planet. There’s no point in denying that.

That is how I interpret for example Gabe’s latest comments.

ps. And if you want to dive into the brutal wars that Western culture has in recent years indeed caused in many Arab countries: rest assured that I hate those and that those wars make me as physically sick as they probably make you sick. We’ve had our share of wars in Western Europe, and we don’t want any wars anymore. But if we want to solve this thing, a key part will be integrating Islamic culture into Western European culture. And that’s not an easy task with extremists at both sides of the fence (created and inspired by the war-situations). What we certainly don’t want here is another unsolvable Israel-Palestine situation.

I sincerely hope more people with all their cultural heritage will try to come to common grounds, and accept we have to live together in the most accepted way most people will feel comfortable with. In the end we all live on thesame small planet -there’s no point in denying that.

The ban is a purely symbolic gesture. The French government is sending a message to all immigrant populations with traditions that offend the mainstream, not just burka-wearers.

“If you want to continue living in France, it’s time to adapt your traditions to be less offensive to your neighbours.”

A host has the right to set ground rules and expect guests to behave.

How exactly will this ban address those problems when the estimated number of burqa-wearing women in France is so low? Are these 500 families single-handedly bringing down the rest of the immigrant community?

This ban will solve nothing at all. Time would be much better spent trying to come up with a real solution.

The Dune quote works both ways. If immigrants have customs that offend the culture they’ve chosen to live with, those immigrants ought to show at least as much respect for their hosts as their hosts have shown them.

To put it another way: if someone asked to stay with me in MY house, and then proceeded to hang around in an offensive, racist T-shirt, I would ask them to remove it. If they didn’t, I would kick them out, since they obviously didn’t value my goodwill.

The burka is offensive to many people who see women as their equals. If that’s the overall sentiment of a nation, that’s perfectly fine, and the nation is free to make their own rules.

France, in particular, has given these people a chance to integrate. If the chance is turned down, France has the right to compel integration in the more extreme cases. It’s not like these people can’t leave if they decide burka-wearing is more important than excellent French social services, medical care, wine, cheese, and the all-important European passport.

You’d think the decision would be a no-brainer.

And now, I suppose I’m a racist, facist Nazi bigot with a tiny penis and no understanding of anything.

At least I’m in good company.

Yop, please be informed that you are no longer welcome here. And if necessary I will take steps to make my webserver ignore your IP address. I also don’t feel like discussing your ban with you. Just leave (if your IP is dynamic I have no problems with, at least temporarily, blocking your entire ISP. I’m really not going to allow you to write any new comment here. Enough is enough).

@Mark, in reply to { A meme which I do think is part of western culture, although it seems to be fading rather quickly, is “having the freedom not to adhere to the norm (as long as you don’t harm others)” }. That stands, yes. Note that in law it’s not uncommon that two philosophies conflict. That’s precisely why we have judges and why we can’t program a computer to be a judge. The fewer such conflicts, the better, probably, of course. There can be multiple truths (it’s not uncommon).

The law has to interfere when people are either isolating themselves or being forced to isolate themselves (by for example their father, husband or boyfriend) from society. You say so yourself that, and I’ll quote you, making <a husband> (replace freely) responsible is counterproductive [for that purpose], because you’re almost defining the woman by law as the subject or at least under the care of <her husband>.

Meaning that the only thing law can productively do, is place a global ban on concealing your face in public places. Note that in France the law being proposed doesn’t forbid you to conceal your face on the street (at least not as far as I know), nor at home. In Belgium is masking your face already forbidden in the street, but police officers rarely enforce that law “because it makes their work, with Islamic cultures, more difficult”. I interpret that last as “Islamic men are intimidating our police officers not to enforce the law in our own country”. And indeed, you do see stone throwing at police officers in for example Anderlecht, near Brussels. So my interpretation is probably fairly accurate.

ps. When you come to FOSDEM, don’t visit Anderlecht. Some of its neighborhoods are sickened by ghetto formation by the very same cultures that we are discussing here. If you don’t know your way, you’ll probably get beaten up and you’ll end up in a hospital, because you are in the wrong street (luckily we have very good hospitals ready for you, though). This isn’t unique to this particular culture. But it is fairly unique to neighborhoods that have a lot of immigration without integration. It’s precisely this kind of anti-integration sentiment that we want to shield these people away from.

Sadly there are still ultra extreme left wingers that constantly go la la la and are willingly blind for the simple facts on the street. And this isn’t a right-wing point of view anymore and it most definitely isn’t racism. This is widely known in the entire political spectrum, widely studied and very well visible in the statistics. Done by different organizations. Both right-wing biased but also unbiased studies. Either way, undeniable (and you can go experience it yourself too). Nor is Anderlecht the only place, nor is it a unique situation in Western Europe.

And that is why we no longer believe the left-wingers with their multicultural bullshit promises. They didn’t succeed. They had their chance. They failed totally.

ps. We could discuss whether the behavior of street-youth is correlated to anti-integration sentiment or not. But I fear that even that the statistics are undeniably showing. This does not have anything to do with the culture itself (there are plenty of good places in Islam countries, where there is plenty of order on the streets). It has to do with the quagmire you create by isolating a group in a ghetto that hates the surrounding culture (of course for no good reason, but not much people are that philosophic about it, regretfully, in either cultures). It’s not possible to extinguish the native culture from within (and the very idea of that is sickening), so fighting it as a Muslim is nothing but stupidity that wont get you anywhere.

You seem to think that banning burkas is a good way to do that. I disagree strongly. All you’re likely to achieve with that is to hide a few symptoms.

I furthermore think that a law making a husband responsible for his wife’s actions (which you are if you’re making him attend a seminar as a consequence his wife’s wearing a burka) is actually counterproductive to that purpose, because you’re almost defining the woman by law as the subject or at least under the care of her husband, like a child up to a certain age is under the care of their parents, and hence the parents must anwer for the child’s actions.

Also, I disagree that “not conceiling your face” is a meme of western culture, just like not “wearing a clown’s nose” is not a meme. On the contrary, “conceiling your face” is a meme in Islamic culture, like “wearing a clown’s nose” is a meme in clown culture, if there is such a thing.

A meme which I do think is part of western culture, although it seems to be fading rather quickly, is “having the freedom not to adhere to the norm (as long as you don’t harm others)”.

I’m not saying it’ll always help, I’m saying it’s the best I can come up with that will most likely help. As mentioned before ain’t fining and throwing people in jail going to helpful. Especially not when the target of such punishments are the women affected by this.

ps. Although I nearly always follow Richard Dawkins in his scientific work, and even also, at least partly, in his work on memetics, I don’t necessarily (have to) share his views on other philosophic questions. Questions like “what to do with the memes that we so far acquired being the species that we are, within mankind’s many cultures”. Realizing that this is how we humans work doesn’t mean that we lack a morality (which is by the way something Richard Dawkins very much agrees with, and he illustrates in his books that we’re not the only species with a sense of morality - although there are other authors that go more into this subject, which I’d recommend over Richard Dawkins’ work here -), a defined culture OR that we must follow Richard Dawkins in every single philosophy that he has (which I’m sure he’ll also agree with, he’s quite a sensible guy, you know). We are idea-machines that receive, copy, adapt and redistribute ideas. That’s the very thing that he’s trying to say. Culture is a consequence of being groups of such idea-machines. Not concealing your face is such an idea that happens to be the norm for most Western Europeans.

That sets a very strange precedent because it’s making the husband responsible by law for how his wife dresses, which, I thought, was the thing you were trying to fight against in the first place.

In the words of Richard Dawkins: “I don’t dress women - they dress themselves.”

Or in other words yet: All you’re doing with a law like that is limiting what men can make their women wear. How about instead working on helping women get out of such dependencies?

So this means, and frankly this is the case in our culture, that you show a form of disrespect to other people if you refuse not to conceal your face. A disrespect similar to walking around almost naked in deeply Islamic countries. I’m sure you can see that that wouldn’t work over there too, right?

And it’s indeed true that we prefer that people who don’t want to stop concealing their face wouldn’t come to Western Europe. It simply isn’t part of our culture, and it actually is shocking for a lot of Western Europeans in many ways.

@Lisat and @yop: I’m not planning to get called a fascist by a bunch of extreme left wing hippies. Do you guys have anything useful to say other than the rants you just dumped here? If it has anything to do with fascism or calling me a fascist then I’m sorry but please fuck off. I have no interest discussing with followers of Godwin’s law. You’re just not worth my time indeed. I already said this before high above in the discussion too. Last time I allow this, next time I’ll remove the rants and then you’ll just be wasting your time typing it all down.

In fact are you wasting your time already. I skim your posts and if I see words like “fascist” or “nazi” than rest assured that I’m not even taking the time to read more than five more words of your text. It’s just not worth it. Every sensible person knows that.

You can always start your own blog and go ahead with ranting over there. Starting a blog yourself is easy nowadays. There are a lot of places that offer you a blog for free. Go there. Maybe you should start a hippie ranters club too? See how that works out for you.

Joce…

Perhaps you could turn your considerable intellect to understanding why people make the choice to wear the burka, and how the environment influencing that decision could be altered to make a choice not to wear the burka.

The attitudes you express above are more likely to encourage than discourage the attitudes of those who believe the burka is an important or necessary expression of identity.

Yeah, tuxy’s reaction. So what ? He’s saying : the “western freedom” is only the freedom of speech in the public space, the majority can decide whatever it wants. Again, this is YOUR interpretation of freedom, not an universally shared point of view. But the notion is much larger, complex, and _equivocal_. For one thing, the whole liberal philosophy is about freedom from governments’ actions. The right to wear whatever we want on our faces and not be bothered by policemen. For others, freedom can be about equality of treatment. Equality of treatment is what the law is about, for that matter. But everyone know that people wearing a scarf won’t be bothered by policemen, only burka-wearing women will.
The bottom line is that this burka law involves complex notions and complex judgements that CAN’T be reduced to an holistic, ontological view of western culture or western freedom.

When I see you writing “For Western Europeans it certainly is justification that the laws are defined by elected people”, I almost fell out of my chair. It’s one thing that you defend this opinion, it’s another to project it to an entire western european people. Dammit, liberalism has been scared for ages of democracy and the will of the majority ! Why do you think it built representative democracy, neglected referendums, and framed constitutionnal rights and courts and so on ? To protect minorities and individuals from the majority’s will ! What is happening in France show that sometimes it is not enough. You can disagree with this view, but not suppress it by illegitimately projecting your views on everyone. The simple fact that these questions prompt so many reactions prove that you are wrong of saying that the entire western thought is with you.

Another thing Tuxy has said is considerations on what we are allowed to do in islamic countries. Well I don’t care about freedom in islamic countries (well in fact I care about it but you know what I mean), I care about freedom in our countries.

And when he says “Conform or leave is the guiding principle here”. Yeah but no, they won’t be leaving. Again, it is worth reminding that the burka law won’t do much harm. Let’s rather imagine a muslim veil law. What would happen in this case is not a mass exode. What would happen is angry reactions from angry people who have been denied cultural rights. It would only mean confrontation. Community sense would be exacerbated. This is exactly the same scheme that would happen on the socio-economic level if a governement decided a measure that is badly hurting the sensitivity of a whole professionnal sector. They would organize and they would fight it.

Oh, and if you are thinking about throwing them out of our countries in case they protest, you are dreaming. Most of them have the same nationality than us. Wake up, this is the XXI century, Europe is partly muslim and that won’t change until the secularization of muslim people. Of course, fighting their religion instead of respecting them for who they are and leaving them live their lifes is a serious threat to that process of secularization.

One last thing. You talk a lot about integration but you are wrong to use that word. What you mean is ASSIMILATION. That’s totally different and almost fascistic (I don’t care about the goldwin point, we are talking about matters that are directly related to debates that occured between the two wars). When I see muslim girls at the university that wear a veil and that would back off if I tried to kiss her on the cheek as an hello gesture, like I would do with any other girls, that does not mean that these girls are not integrated. It _only_ means they are not assimilated. In other words, they are DIFFERENT. We have to respect them for that. And no, wearing veils and backing off a kiss is not a mark of disrespect against us, even if it is very easy to rhetorically turn the notions upside/down.

This has nothing to do with discrimination, but everything to do with the democratic process and political traditions that exist in Western Europe. It used to be that religion had more of a stake in Western European politics. But not anymore. And in most (I even think all) Western European countries the population want the Church to stay out of politics and lawmaking.

Finally, what you are saying - “It just works that way in Western Europe. If you don’t like that, don’t come to Western Europe. And no, we wont change that. Period.”

And with that PERIOD, you now will get me to shut up. I was trying to get that out of you. So now please don’t add those nice pre sentences like “We need to protect (but not overprotect) the women of Muslim cultures”. Because, the wearing of veil have religious significance for them where “Western European culture is that the politicians and judges define the law. Not the religious people.”

My point being: It is you land, your rule and so get to decide. But that doesn’t make it you are doing the “right” thing for them. So don’t even think that you can ever understand that is “good” or even “bad” for them. Just say like you said now:

It just works that way in Western Europe. If you don’t like that, don’t come to Western Europe. And no, we wont change that. Period.

without any veil of moderation, Justice, equality, nondiscrimination etc.